By Ely Delaney

With everyone cutting back costs in networking is, now more than ever, one of the best and most cost effective ways to market your business and keep your name in front of your prospects and clients.

This has always been one of my favourite ways to market any business while keeping costs down. It not only gets you out there but also builds relationships faster than any other advertising or marketing you can do.

Here's some of the benefits of using networking to promote your business:

1. It's usually the most cost effective way to get out there. Some networking events are free. Even the higher prices "Leads Groups" like BNI or Le Tip are only a few hundred dollars per year to be part of. Compare that to a newspaper ad at a few hundred dollars per month. If you are just starting out or money is a little tight, this is the best bang you can get for your buck.

2. You're in front of your prospects at least once every month. Many networking groups meet once a week. The more you are in front of prospective clients, the more likely they will be to use you instead of picking up a "yellow book" and looking for someone they don't even know.

3. You build better relationships. People but from people they know, like and trust. When you are part of a networking or leads group, you build better relationships than you ever could from an ad in the local newspaper.

They know you and the longer you are there, the more likely they will feel trust for you and know you are the right person for the job. Also, they may not need you today but next month when they do, they won't even bother trying to shop around for the best price. They will just call you.

4. You build a mini sales force for your business. How would you like to have 3 people out there marketing your business's services? Part of being in a networking group is the referrals. As you build these relationships, the other members are also looking for people that need your services too. There isn't a better pre-sale than when someone says, "you need a good auto mechanic? I know this guy and he's just great!"

5. And last, the most underrated and mentioned reason Networking groups are great to market your business. They have a built in Mastermind group. If you are looking for other marketing ideas or help with your marketing plan, you have a group of other like minded business owners or managers that are all there to help each other. This can sometimes be worth much more than the referrals can be depending on the people in the group. You may get your million dollar marketing idea just from feedback others in your networking group can give you.

So, get started with networking right away. It's on the easiest ways to help your small business grow by leaps and bounds if you network it right. Pick up a local Business Journal at your local bookstore. Call you local Chamber of Commerce and ask them about networking groups. Get involved and remember, you'll get back what you put in to it. If you are involved and focus on building the relationships, you'll see your returns back very quickly!

And now I would like to invite you to claim your FREE Quickstart Guide "Step By Step: Writing Ads That Actually Work!" when you subscribe to learn more about the book Maximum Profits Marketing. Stop struggling to figure out what works and what doesn't in marketing with this recipe book of marketing ideas. You can claim your free Quickstart Guide at http://www.MaximumProfitsBook.com

From Ely Delaney - The Business Marketing Mentor
 

Way too many and there is no excuse ...

I wanted to set about teaching you in this article the secrets to customising your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and how to change those common Microsoft Powerpoint Templates. See whether you realise it or not, all of the powerpoint template presentations that Microsoft provides are in fact customisable. In fact, most of the presentation templates you find in Microsoft Powerpoint 2000, XP or 2003 are simply built on individual drawing objects or shapes that can be found on the Drawing toolbar under the AutoShapes menu.

Lets look at how you customise Microsoft supplied templates ...

First off we have to create a new presentation, which I strongly encourage you to do at this stage by opening Microsoft Powerpoint and using the shortcut keystroke, [Ctrl] + [N]. Next we want to apply one of those common Microsoft templates, seeing I am working in Microsoft Powerpoint 2003 as I am writing this article, I am going to describe changing the Digital Dots template. So you need to apply this template by choosing the Format menu and then choosing Slide Design from the drop down menu. On the right hand side of the screen the Task pane open. Move your mouse pointer over each of the slide designs till you see the one called Digital Dots and click on it once. You should notice this design now applied to your slide.

When you first see this template, you may probably think it looks pretty complex, something too difficult to modify. Well do not be fooled. This template is simply made up of a series of lines and circles from your Drawing toolbar. Not a single thing more. I know when I am running my instructor led courses, many of my students say to me "It's a picture and way too difficult to modify". Ahh, but its not, it is simply a series of drawing objects that are skilfully coloured to look like a picture.

So how do we modify it...

Very good question, the secret to modifying these templates, is to modify the master slide. The master slide controls the look and feel of your presentation so to do that you must first activate the master slide. To do this simply go to the View menu, choose Master from the drop down menu and then choose Slide Master. In the left hand pane you should see two pictures towards the top of your screen just before the toolbars. These two pictures represent your Title Slide Master and the Slide Master used by the main body of your presentation. The Title Slide Master should be open in front of you and this is the one we will modify. Keep in mind that the rules we do for the Title Slide Master also apply to the other slide masters in your presentation.

What you need to do is to modify the drawing objects in this slide so just click on one of the buttons in the slide that is away from the placeholders. What you should notice is that a square object select marker appears. This tells you that all of the elements you see are a group. So to ungroup these objects, right mouse click and from the shortcut menu choose Grouping and then Ungroup.

You will then see all the individual objects selected in the slide. Simply click away from the select objects and then click on any one object, actually lets change one of the buttons. Once you have selected the button, right mouse click and choose Format Autoshape. You should notice that the Format Autoshape dialog box is similar to the Autoshape dialog box you use for standard drawing object.

Let us change the colour of the object to green by choosing green from the Fill Colour drop down box. To complete your change simply choose the OK button. Now what you should notice is that you have one green button. You could now go through and change every single button and customise the slide master to look the way you require.

You can even go through and customise the background of the Slide master by going to the Format menu and choosing Background from the drop-down menu. When you change the background on the Title Slide Master and the Slide Master, it will be reflected in all the slides in your presentation.

Just a short side bar ...

If you want to copy the formatting from one object to another, the simplest way is to first choose the object you want to copy the formatting from. Go up to the Standard toolbar and double click on the Format Painter button and then click on each of the objects you want to copy this formatting to. This tool is really useful especially in this case as you have lots of small objects to be modified.

Once you have finished customising your Title Slide Master and Slide Master simply click once on the Close Master View button on the Slide Master View toolbar. This will take you back to your main presentation. What you should now notice is that your whole presentation has been modified to suit the changes you made to the Slide Masters.

The bottom line is that there is no excuse for you to be using the same powerpoint template as everyone else who has purchased Microsoft Powerpoint. You can now ensure when you do your next presentation, or give your speech at your next seminar that you will have your own customised and unique looking presentation. No longer do we have to see the same boring old templates. Let the Microsoft Powerpoint Template revolution begin.

I have available a Microsoft PowerPoint Shortcuts to help you learn the Microsoft Powerpoint Shortcuts. I also have courses for Microsoft Word Tutorial and Microsoft Excel Tutorial.